I dunno... I just finished playing the demo and even with the "new" features, the game still feels every bit of a mess that the original NG3 was. The controls are clunky, the karma system is bizarrely implemented (you can upgrade at any time? uh... okay), the game still has you use manual controls for mundane actions (great... pulling triggers to climb a wall; never got tired of that the first time...), ultimate techniques are still random as hell, the bow sucks even more than it did in the original game, there are still no healing items of any kind, and some of the animations are weird. At least the enemies aren't begging for their lives - while trying to fed you several dozen cases of gunpowder via their gun - every 5 seconds like in the original.

Now, to be fair, I played "vanilla" NG3 up until about June last year and then dropped it almost completely, so I may just be rustier than a bike chain that's been sitting out for the last 2 years. But as it stands, my hopes have been effectively kicked in the dick.

Addendum: I've been through the various modes a few times now... the long of short of my assessment (and mine alone) is that just about every high point this version gives the player is rendered moot due to various problems from the original game rearing their ugly heads back out. One of the bigger ones is that counter-attacks are complete useless - if you manage to pull one off, the enemy will simply flip out of it, and this happens almost all the time. The holes in the combat only get worse as you crank the difficulty up, thus making the game hard not due to challenge, but due to how broken the combat engine really is.

Still not as bad as NG2 in some regards, but so far, it's definitely looking to be the weakest in the series, even with all the "new" features.